mallet
Americannoun
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mallets
plural
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a hammerlike tool with a head commonly of wood but occasionally of rawhide, plastic, etc., used for driving any tool with a wooden handle, as a chisel, or for striking a surface.
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the wooden implement used to strike the balls in croquet.
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Polo. the long-handled stick, or club, used to drive the ball.
noun
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a tool resembling a hammer but having a large head of wood, copper, lead, leather, etc, used for driving chisels, beating sheet metal, etc
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a long stick with a head like a hammer used to strike the ball in croquet or polo
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a very large powerful steam locomotive with a conventional boiler but with two separate articulated engine units
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mallet
1375–1425; late Middle English maillet < Middle French, equivalent to mail maul + -et -et
Explanation
A mallet is a tool with a large, barrel-shaped, head — used to pound on something. You might use a mallet to strike an instrument or in playing croquet. Yeah, right. A mallet is a long-handled implement with a barrel-shaped head used in games like croquet or polo. In music, a mallet is a stick with a rounded end that is sometimes padded, used to strike percussion instruments like timpani, bells, or a marimba. Use your yarn or rubber mallets to play the marimba, and use your wooden mallets to play the xylophone.
Vocabulary lists containing mallet
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Alternatively, use a meat mallet to flatten and add a pattern to the cookies.
From Salon ● Dec. 13, 2025
The ensemble spends much of its time on mallet instruments, setting the stage, keeping a melodic line or pulse going.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 12, 2025
Danger feels suspended in the soft-blue light, in which the lion’s tail and the round, silvery moon, balanced just-so, are poised like a raised mallet and gong.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 15, 2025
As Tom uses a mallet to hammer in the homemade signs, passing motorists sound their horns.
From BBC ● Apr. 10, 2025
The old man has brought a canvas tool bag that holds caulking irons and a big wooden mallet, and a coil of fluffy white cotton.
From "The Young Man and the Sea" by Rodman Philbrick
At St. Anne School in Santa Monica, I watched Cummins harness the squirmy energy of second-graders wielding xylophone mallets.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 21, 2026
Quite taken by Ayers's enthusiasm and delight at the performance, Hampton gifted the youngster a pair of vibe mallets.
From BBC ● Mar. 6, 2025
They had all the equipment at the ready: crowbars, shovels, and mallets.
From Slate ● Dec. 15, 2024
He holds small mallets in his “hands” to play a kind of xylophone called a marimba.
From NewsForKids.net ● Apr. 1, 2024
Within reach of his fists all day, pounding chisel against stone with great heavy mallets instead of fashioning leaves or watching the gold turn crimson in the crucible?
From "The Golden Goblet" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
